


842 Days

by VforVitaly



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-10
Updated: 2013-08-10
Packaged: 2017-12-23 01:24:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,173
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/920364
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VforVitaly/pseuds/VforVitaly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ethan enlisted before he met Danny, and he didn’t think anything of it. He had nothing else to do. He was strong, focused, why not go into the army? He was ready to be called up, just lying low, waiting for his orders, when he accidentally met the love of his life.</p><p>Based on this AU: http://igayfordethan.tumblr.com/post/57220337587/au-ethan-has-to-leave-to-the-military-leaving<br/>(I don't know how to link better, so sorry it's the whole URL)</p>
            </blockquote>





	842 Days

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first Dethan fic, sorry if it's not great...

            Ethan enlisted before he met Danny, and he didn’t think anything of it. He had nothing else to do. He was strong, focused, why not go into the army? He was ready to be called up, just lying low, waiting for his orders, when he accidentally met the love of his life.

            It started off as a mild flirtation, Ethan refusing to let himself get close enough to care when he knew he’d be leaving any day, but his orders didn’t come, and Danny crashed through every single wall that Ethan put up. Every day, the two got closer, Ethan fell more and more in love, and both became more and more anxious about the impending departure.

            The day Ethan’s orders came, he stood by the mailboxes in their apartment complex for a full two hours, frozen, not sure how he was going to tell his lover the news.

            They hadn’t been living together for long – Ethan’s lease had been up at the end of the last month, and with his orders coming pretty much any time, it had just made sense for him to stay with Danny until they did. However, sharing a bed every night, a bathroom, a kitchen, a living room, had only brought them closer together, and he didn’t want to go, but he had no choice.

            When Danny got home from work, Ethan was still at the mailboxes. Danny walked over to him to greet him, but froze himself when he saw the look on Ethan’s face.

            “Are those…”

            “Yes.”

            “When?”

            “Thursday.”

            “Oh.” Danny gulped.

            They both knew that this was coming, it had been coming since before they met, but the reality of it hit them both so much harder than they’d thought. They’d talked about this in bed, after sex, cuddling, holding each other. When Ethan left, that would be it. He’d be gone, and they would both move on, but now that he was leaving in three days, it seemed a lot more jarring.

            “Come on,” Danny finally said, taking Ethan’s hand. “Let’s go upstairs.”

            He led him up the stairs to their apartment and sat down on the couch, looking at him. He didn’t want to break up. He wanted Ethan to stay, for them to be together. He’d not met anyone as promising as Ethan in years – in his whole life, really, and he didn’t want to give that up, but what choice did he have?

            Four months. Four months they’d been together, and in four months, they both fell head over heels in love, and now figuring out what to do was going to be the hardest thing.

            “I don’t have a choice,” Ethan said softly, sitting down on the couch, snuggling up next to Danny.

            “I know.” Danny nodded, putting his arm around Ethan. “I know.”

            They stayed like that for the rest of the night, not saying anything, because what was there to say? Just holding each other. They slept on the couch, curled around each other, and when they woke up in the morning, neither really knew what to say, so Danny went to work, and Ethan started getting ready to leave.

            They ignored the talk far longer than they should have – all the way until Thursday morning, when Danny silently drove Ethan to the airport. He parked the car and walked with him to the security line, where he knew he could go no farther.

            “I’ll come back one day, I promise,” Ethan said, finally breaking the silence.

            “I’ll be here,” Danny found himself saying, looking into Ethan’s eyes.

            “What?” Ethan didn’t know what to say, but the lump in his throat was already threatening to give way to tears.

            “I know we agreed we’d break up when you left, but I…I’ve never met anyone I cared about as much as I care about you. I’ve never met anyone that I want to be in love with for the rest of my life, and if you have to be gone for a few years before we can do that, I mean, I’m 25. I’ve waited 25 years for someone like you to come into my life. I can wait a few more.”

            “You…you’d wait for me?” Ethan asked.

            “If you want me to.” Danny nodded.

            “Okay.” Ethan smiled through the tears glistening in his eyes. “If you change your mind, that’s okay, I just…it makes it easier, leaving, knowing you’ll still be here when I come back.”

            “Just…just _come_ back, okay? Alive.”

            “I will.” Ethan leaned up, kissing Danny passionately – more passionately than he had ever kissed anyone in his life. “I promise.”

            They knew there wasn’t more time, and Ethan had to rush through security to make his flight. Danny stood, silent tears streaming down his cheeks, watching him the whole time, until he disappeared. He didn’t know how long it would be before he saw his man again, but he felt, at least in that moment, that Ethan was worth the wait.

            ***

            As it turned out, waiting for Ethan was the hardest thing that Danny had ever had to do.

            It wasn’t just that he couldn’t see him or talk to him on a regular basis, but when he did talk to him, there was so much that Ethan couldn’t say, and when he got letters, they were full of blacked out locations, hiding Danny from knowing what was really going on in the life of the man that he loved. His soldier was out there, serving his country, and Danny didn’t even know where, he didn’t know what Ethan was doing.

            Ethan was strong, he was tough, he was loyal, so Danny knew there was a good chance he was seeing action, and Danny hated that. He knew that Ethan had signed up because he’d been alone, because he’d wanted to have something to fight for, and his country seemed better than nothing, but that didn’t put Danny’s mind at ease. At all.

            Every time the phone rang, every time the doorbell rang, every time the mailman came, he worried that there was going to be word that something had happened to Ethan, and with every day that he didn’t hear from him, that anxiety grew stronger. All that he knew was that his man was in Afghanistan, and right now, there wasn’t any place Danny would rather him be less.

            The first time Ethan got leave, he got sick. Too sick to fly home to be with Danny, and though they talked on the phone every day of that time, and Danny offered to fly to him, they couldn’t make the logistics work.

            The second year, Ethan’s leave fell while Danny was on a business trip to Cairo that he couldn’t get out of. Ethan was supposed to meet him there, but a freeze on all planes coming into and going from the Cairo airport due to a threat kept them apart, and it felt like the world was against them, that someone was trying to send them a sign.

            It had been more than two years since they’d seen each other, and yet they wrote every day, each letter filled with words of love, telling the other how much they meant to him.

            And then the letters stopped coming.

            First it was a week, and that was normal. Danny didn’t get letters every day, not when Ethan was busy, not when he had things to do and couldn’t find the time to mail the letters – though he still wrote every day. Sometimes, Danny got seven or eight letters all at once.

            Then it was two weeks, and Danny started to get worried. He called, but he wasn’t family, so they wouldn’t tell him anything. He tried to get in touch with Ethan’s twin brother, Aiden, the only family Ethan had left, but Aiden had never approved of Ethan’s relationship with Danny, and as a result, he never returned Danny’s calls, leaving Danny in the dark.

            Then it was three weeks, and still no word. Danny still wrote every single day, but with less and less surety that his letters were reaching his soldier. He didn’t want to believe that something might have happened to Ethan, but it was getting hard not to. He hadn’t written, e-mailed, or called in 23 days, and with each passing day, Danny became more and more sure that he would never see Ethan again.

            After that, Danny started going through the motions. He went to work, he came home, he had dinner, he went to bed. He woke up, he showered, he went to work. He didn’t go out with his friends anymore, he didn’t go to the gym, he couldn’t muster the strength to do anything. He just wanted to know what had happened to Ethan, but at the same time, he wasn’t sure at all that he did want to know.

            One day, more than 6 weeks after he’d last heard from Ethan, he came home to find the door to his apartment ajar.

            “Hello?” He called, looking around for something that he could use as a weapon.

            He grabbed a golf club from an unused set that someone had given him, set down his briefcase, and walked slowly through the living room. When he got closer, he heard noises in the kitchen. He gripped the golf club tighter, ready to strike and run, if that was what it came down to.

            “I’m armed!” he shouted as he leaped into the kitchen, hoping to get the jump on the intruder, but the second he saw who it was, the golf club clattered to the floor, and he stood there. Frozen.

            “I’m home,” Ethan said softly, looking up at Danny, his eyes wide.

            “You’re…I thought…I thought you were dead,” Danny whispered, not 100% sure he wasn’t seeing a ghost right now. “I didn’t hear from you, six weeks, no one would tell me what had happened, I-”

            “I’m sorry.” Ethan moved closer, hoping Danny wasn’t too angry with him. “They gave me an opportunity, told me if I took a mission with a few other guys, when I finished, I could be done, come home – honorable discharge. If I didn’t take it, it might have been years before I saw you again. I couldn’t tell anyone, I had to go dark, I didn’t mean to hurt you, Danny, I just wanted to come home to you. I understand if you’re angry, I wasn’t even sure if you’d have changed the locks, I-”

            “I would never change the locks on you,” Danny whispered. He moved forwards, pulling Ethan into a tight embrace, burying his face in the other man’s neck. “Welcome home,” he whispered, warm tears spilling form his eyes, staining the collared shirt of his soldier.

            Ethan held on to Danny just as tight, his own tears wetting Danny’s button down.

            They stayed like that almost 15 minutes. Just holding each other – not kissing, not speaking, just clinging to each other as though if they let go, they’d be torn apart, and honestly, neither was sure that wasn’t the case. It had been so long since they’d seen each other, and Danny had been so sure that Ethan was dead that having him back in his arms was almost like a miracle.

            “I can’t believe you waited for me,” Ethan finally said, pulling back, raising a hand to Danny’s cheek, gently caressing his smooth skin. “842 days it’s been, Danny. And you waited for me.”

            “And I’d wait 842 more if I had to,” he whispered.

            “But you don’t.” Ethan leaned up, kissing him softly. “I’ll never make you wait for me again.”

            “Okay.” Danny sniffled, reaching up and wiping a tear from Ethan’s eye.

            “In fact, I want to see you every single one of the next 842 days to make up for the time that I was gone.”

            “I think…” Danny sighed, a shaky breath leaving him. He was still in shock from seeing Ethan – elated shock, but shock. “I think that we can make that work.”

            “I love you, Danny – the whole time I was gone, that never wavered, I just want you to know that. I loved you every single one of those 842 days.”

            “I know.” Danny nodded, trying to bite back more tears. “I love you too.”

            Danny pulled Ethan tight against him, never wanting to let him go again, and luckily, he knew, deep down, that he’d never have to.

            Danny never found out just what it was that Ethan had had to do to come home, Ethan wasn’t sure Danny would want him anymore if he knew, and Danny, well, his curiosity was trumped by his love for the other man. It was the one secret that they would never allow to come between them, the one scar that Ethan would keep hidden from Danny for his entire life, but the scar, over time, did start to heal, and with each night spent in Danny’s arms, it faded just a little bit more.

**Author's Note:**

> I know that's probably NOT how the army works, but creative license was necessary! Sorry if it's not that great, but thanks for reading anyways!


End file.
